Hello Drone Community,
Today, I want to talk about the poorest village I've seen in the Philippines and compete in this week's drone competition.
We entered this village because a weather system was coming, and this was the best spot to hide from the wind. Entering the reef was easy, but we definitely did not have room for error. We were running low on fresh supplies, so we went ashore to see if they had any little shops.
It turned out the whole village had fewer supplies than we had on the boat itself. In fact, this was the poorest village I've seen in the whole of the Philippines. The biggest problem in the Philippines is the earthquakes and the violent typhoons that roll through. The school did not have a roof due to the recent typhoon, and the teacher at the school had somewhat better English. She said she was counting the days until she could leave the village because living there was hard. With little government support, many of these villages struggle just to survive.
This was quite a shock to me. I've sailed through all the South Asian countries and have never seen such poverty. They catch any fish they can. It was quite hard to navigate through the nets they had set up, and we only found a good anchorage after a village boat came out and told us where to drop the hook. Most reefs are destroyed because dynamite fishing is used in many areas in the Philippines. For those who don't know, dynamite fishing involves throwing dynamite onto the reefs and collecting the dead fish that float up.
We cannot really do much to stop dynamite fishing, since this is the only way they survive. They really don't care about the size of the fish; it can be as small as your finger and they will eat it. This is the life of these villages.
We got to know the village better and decided to give some school books, glasses, and canned food to the villagers. We bought all these because some sailors suggested that we do so if we encountered this sort of village. The soil around the village is really poor, which makes it hard for them to grow their own food. The village is also badly situated, and the sea is gradually eroding it.
I hope you enjoyed this little blog. Feel free to check out my profile for similar content.
This week, drone contests are going on.
Paul